15 May 2002
It feels strange to be saying goodbye to Christine. We never spoke, she knew nothing about my life and – aside from what I could surmise from the state of her liver and arteries – I knew nothing about hers.
Yet, in her silence, she’s taught me almost everything. And today, in the university chapel, we’re thanking her and the other cadavers donated to our medical school this year, for letting us take them apart.
‘The generosity of this gift will be felt for decades, as the doctors-to-be in this room use the knowledge and skills they have gained to treat tens, if not hundreds of thousands of patients,’ the dean intones.
Even Wilcox has allowed his permanently arched eyebrow to drop, and without that sardonic touch, he looks younger. Laura sits between us. There were no recriminations when I told her about me and Kerry. She just said, I always thought it’d be you and her.
Wilcox thinks she’d shagged someone during the long summer break anyway and was probably relieved she didn’t have to dump me first.
‘It takes a special person, and special families, to choose this type of donation . . .’
The first time we met Christine, there was laughter, but that was to cover up the fear we all felt at seeing a dead body for the first time. It was like being plunged into a horror film: the stingy, suffocating smell of the formalin, the chill of the room and then the reality of it – or should it be her? We didn’t know the correct way to think of a cadaver. Christine wasn’t even her real name, but one we picked for her, because we had to call her something.
After that first session, we went to the pub and ate two-for-one meals, mistaking our sudden appetite for something metaphysical till Wilcox told us it was well known that the smell of the chemicals made you hungry.
I wonder if Christine will stay my favourite patient? In the dissection room, working through the layers and labyrinthine complexities of a body, I could almost believe in God.
When the service is over, we drink weak coffee and eat petticoat tails of shortbread with family members. Small talk is never my forte, and as I try to dredge some up, it’s hard not to look for traits that might tell us if Christine’s relatives are here: a double-jointed thumb clasped around a pale-green tea cup, a rather prominent supraorbital ridge.
‘Pub?’ Wilcox says, when the last of the guests have gone and we’re helping to clear the room. Even he has found this tough.
‘Pub!’ Laura confirms.
It’s tempting. ‘A quick one?’
‘More like a full-on bender.’ Wilcox taps his suit pocket. ‘I have everything we need.’
The thought of what I already owe him for previous supplies changes my mind instantly. We’ve gone beyond coke: Wilcox offers an extensive range of pharmaceutical solutions, a pill for every ill. I never give him cash – he’s not short of that – but he expects payment in kind. I struggle enough with my own essays, without having to do his too. Which then means I need more meds to help me focus, and more to help me sleep.
Even the most devious street dealer couldn’t have come up with such a perfect vicious circle.
‘On second thoughts, I might head off . . .’
‘Back to your 999 girl? So sweet,’ Wilcox says. The raised eyebrow is back.
I turn to Laura in time to see a brief flash of hurt in her eyes. ‘Not even a quick toast to Christine and her perky liver?’ she says.
It does feel disloyal to leave now. The strange camaraderie that medical school generates must be like what soldiers experience at boot camp. In the anatomy lab, we face the messy brutality of the body. We bond over our mistakes.
But the strongest bond I have is not with these people. Kerry covered up the worst mistake I’ve ever made, and then her generosity made sure it wouldn’t ruin my life.
Right now this soldier wants to go home.
She’s sleeping before her night shift, but I can’t resist getting into bed next to her; luckily, Mum is asleep too so I don’t have to make small talk with her first. The first time I had sex with Kerry, pure need overcame my reluctance to do it under my mother’s roof.
Now we share a room, but we’re well practised at making love in gleeful, conspiratorial silence.
Kerry turns towards me, kisses me with a toothpaste mouth.
‘How was it?’
‘Strange but uplifting.’ I run my hand down her naked back. Laura taught me many things and that paramedic boyfriend of Kerry’s did the same. For a long time in sixth form, I thought we were destined to be each other’s first lovers, but that might have been mortifying.
As it is, we are devastatingly compatible. Making Kerry come makes me feel more capable than anything else in my life. Correction: it is possibly the only time I feel capable.
‘You’re always horny after anatomy.’
She’s reciprocating, running her hand down my chest and further.
‘It’s the “carpe diem” thing.’
Her body is warm and her ribcage expands as she laughs. ‘It’s not life that you want me to seize, though, is it, Tim?’
This time last year, I wouldn’t have dared dream that Kerry Smith would be in my bed, that we’d be about to make love.
Do I deserve her? It’s not normal to keep secrets from the person you love. But the drugs are only temporary, till the exams are over. Or just into the start of next term, because already I am having sleepless nights at the thought of breathing, talking patients who might confirm my fear that I am not cut out for this.
STOP. NOW.
She kisses me again and I let the biological response overwhelm my thinking.